Thursday, February 18, 2016

Schole' in Practice Week 20

This was our last week before our 3rd learning celebration of the year! The kids were busy working on their Greek vignettes, and making laurels for their performance. We also had our first SGCA student music recital and some scary, smelly experiments for our science! We started today with our final week of virtue focus on perseverance, with an object lesson that stumped them all. Join us as we recount our schole' moments for week 20….

Morning Time

Today in our morning time we started out reviewing our virtue focus on perseverance and then moved into an object lesson. The kids were called up four at a time to each have a block in front of them and a bowl of water between them all. They were instructed to place the block into the water, with the caveat that they could only use their pointer finger to do it. We had some creative attempts such as trying to flip the block into the water, but in the end, it proved to be a difficult albeit impossible, task. Then I had a Mom come over and we each had a block and our pointer finger. We proceeded to move the blocks together and then together lifted the blocks into the water. Amongst cries of "cheating", we talked about how it wasn't cheating, it was looking at the problem a different way, and not competing against one another to be the first to get the block in, but problem solving together as a team to reach the same goal. We then applied that to school and the idea of working together to help one another towards academic excellence.

After our lesson was complete we did our Bible memory work and then went outside to do our Jesus cadence, but this time we added a little twist to it. The kids were divided by boys and girls and they took turns running as they recited back and forth. They had lots of energy today in anticipation of our upcoming learning celebration, we were working some of that energy out before they began their first practice today.

Great Books

Our students began taking what they had learned during Greek Mythology for Great Books and translated that into Greek vignettes, for their upcoming learning celebration next week. They each learned how to manage their parts, props and the flow of this performance for their audience.

Fine Arts

During fine arts, the students began working on their laurels for the upcoming learning celebration.

Schole' Lunch

Schole' lunch performance was by an SGCA student, Sarah, accompanied by her music teacher, Ms. Jackie Boegel. Sarah played songs on the clarinet, accompanied by the piano and trumpet, and then played a few songs on the piano herself, to complete her recital. She was our first student to perform for our group, as we look towards next year when the upper elementary and middle school students will be leading more of the Schole' lunches on their Wednesday campus day.

Schole' Playground

We headed outside to try and beat the rain, and played a few rounds of Mr. Wolf. We got rained out after a few rounds, and then headed indoors to play some fun rounds of duck, duck, goose. The kids had a blast playing this game before returning to their afternoon classes with moans of "one more round".

Latin

Our students are making terrific progress in Latin this year. They have been working through their workbooks week by week and playing many review games. We've seen some very blessed moments with our older students assisting the younger students in class, as they needed help. It's been a wonderful opportunity to see mentorship and virtue practice occur.

Math

In math games the students spent time working together in math stations. They were based on the various skill levels of our student body and paired accordingly.

Science

Forgive the blurry picture, but the face was priceless and I had to use it! This was the reaction of the students when we showed them the "picture of the day". This practice has become one of the favorite things we do in science. We show the student's a picture and then they have to make an observation, inference and prediction. They are instructed and guided in their responses to help them understand the difference between these three terms and they love the wacky pictures. Todays photo was of several acres of land in Australia covered by what they kept thinking was snow or water. Once it was revealed that it was actually spider webs, the girls in particular were a bit grossed out. :)

Our science experiment was based on the work of Greek physician, pharmacologist, and botanist, Pedanius Dioscorides' work with plants, and his discovery of the medicinal uses of various parts of the plants. His famous work De materia medica served as the primary text of pharmacology until the 15th century! Our student's were observing the differences in compounds present in various parts of a plant. They took grapes and tangerines, then peeled the skins and proceeded to place flesh and the skins in separate containers. Then using vinegar and ammonia for both flesh and skin they sat for about 40 minutes. Then observations were made about the color changes or lack of changes, based on skin and flesh, for the various samples tested. Discussion of acids and bases was also introduced.